no use in having
to wait round for a needless number of days."

And so we waited only for the 31st of July, the next day but one, when
the Great Experiment would be made.

Chapter XVII

Doubts and Fears

We learn of great things by little experiences. The history of ages is
but an indefinite repetition of the history of hours. The record of a
soul is but a multiple of the story of a moment. The Recording Angel
writes in the Great Book in no rainbow tints; his pen is dipped in no
colours but light and darkness. For the eye of infinite wisdom there
is no need of shading. All things, all thoughts, all emotions, all
experiences, all doubts and hopes and fears, all intentions, all wishes
seen down to the lower strata of their concrete and multitudinous
elements, are finally resolved into direct opposites.

Did any human being wish for the epitome of a life wherein were
gathered and grouped all the experiences that a child of Adam could
have, the history, fully and frankly written, of my own mind during the
next forty-eight hours would afford him all that could be wanted. And
the Recorder could have wrought as usual in sunlight and shadow, which
may be taken to represent the final expressions of Heaven and Hell.
For in the highest Heaven is Faith; and Doubt hangs over the yawning
blackness of Hell.

There were of course times of sunshine in those two days; moments when,
in the realisation of Margaret's sweetness and her love for me, all
doubts were dissipated like morning mist before the sun. But the
balance of the time--and an overwhelming balance it was--gloom hung
over me like a pall. The hour, in whose coming I had acquiesced, was
approaching so quickly and was already so near that the sense of
finality was bearing upon me! The issue was perhaps life or death to
any of us; but for this we were all prepared. Margaret and I were one
as to the risk. The question of the moral aspect of the case, which
involved the religious belief in which I had been reared, was not one
to trouble me; for the issues, and the causes that lay behind them,
were not within my power even to comprehend. The doubt of the success
of the Great Experiment was such a doubt as exists in all enterprises
which have great possibilities. To me, whose life was passed in a
series of intellectual struggles, this form of doubt was a stimulus,
rather than deterrent. What then was it that made for me a trouble,
which became an anguis